A makeshift fleet of hundreds of fishing boats sailed from the Philippines towards a small island at the heart of a bitter territorial dispute between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea.
Hundreds of fishermen and members of the Atin Ito activist group boarded small wooden boats with stabilizing beams known as outriggers and set sail for the Scarborough Shoal, a fisheries-rich atoll that was seized by China in 2012, despite it being inside the Philippines' 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.
A lone Philippine Coast Guard boat accompanied the convoy during a journey that was organized to drop small territorial buoys along the route and deliver food and fuel to Filipino fishermen working near the shoal.
The trip comes two weeks after a Philippine coast guard vessel was hit by water cannons from Chinese coast guard vessels near Scarborough Shoal. The Philippine ship sustained damage to its railing and canopy during the confrontation.
The two sides have previously confronted each other near the Scarborough Shoal and the Second Thomas Shoal, another disputed territory where a Philippine warship was intentionally grounded to maintain the archipelago’s claims on the submerged reef.
China has claimed sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea, ignoring competing claims by its regional neighbors, including the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague said in 2016 that China's claims had no legal basis - a decision Beijing has rejected.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse.
